Below is a list of California State Senate and Assembly bills and where CAFP stands on each. Click on a bill to read a description. 

2009 CAFP Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Bills

AB 1542 (Assembly Health Committee) - Access to Care & the Medical Home
AB 1542 (Assembly Health Committee) adds a functional definition of "patient-centered medical home" to California law. With the growing popularity of this concept among consumers and providers, AB 1542 will ensure uniform standards of quality and access that are engendered by the Joint Principles of the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Osteopathic Association, and the American College of Physicians. These principles have become the basis for the National Committee for Quality Assurance certification program. A medical home provides:

• Care that is continuous, focused on prevention, and based on sound, evidence-based medicine rather than episodic, illness-oriented complaint-based care.  
• Care that is patient-centered, physician-guided, longitudinal, cost-efficient, and encompasses the art and science of medicine.
• Physicians that work in partnership with patients and their care team to help patients navigate the complex and often confusing health care system. They provide expert guidance, insight and advice, in language that is informative and specific to patients' needs.
• Patients with access to an entire team of health professionals to assist managing chronic conditions and ensuring that patients receive the right care at the right time.

AB 1201 (M. Perez) - Physician Reimbursement & Immunizations
AB 1201 would require a health plan or insurer (and the Healthy Families Program) that provides coverage for childhood and adolescent immunizations to reimburse a physician or physician group at a rate equal to or greater than the actual cost of acquiring the vaccine plus the cost of administration of the vaccine. The bill also prohibit a plan contract or insurance policy providing coverage for childhood or adolescent immunizations from imposing a deductible, copayment, coinsurance, or other cost-sharing mechanism for the administration of a childhood or adolescent immunization or for related procedures. The bill would also prohibit those contracts or policies from containing a dollar limit provision for the administration of immunizations or including the cost of those immunizations in a dollar limit provision.

SB 1 (Steinberg) -Universal Health Care Coverage for Children
Authored by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, SB 1 seeks to ensure that all children in California may obtain health insurance. This expands eligibility for the Medi-Cal program and the Healthy Families Program by modifying the income requirements applicable to those programs, and by making coverage available regardless of citizenship or immigration status. In addition, it would Healthy Families to be available to children whose household income exceeds 300% of the federal poverty level.

AB 657 (Hernandez) - Health Care Provider Workforce and Diversity
AB 657 would require the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development, in collaboration with the California Workforce Investment Board, to establish the Health Professions Workforce Task Force to assist in the development of a health professions workforce master plan for the state, and would prescribe the functions and duties of the task force in that regard. The bill would require the task force to submit to the office recommendations for a statewide health professions workforce master plan.

AB 526 (Fuentes) - Public Protection and Physician Health Program Act of 2009
This bill would enact the Public Protection and Physician Health Program Act of 2009 to replace the Physician Diversion Program that was dismantled last year.

_____________________________________________________________________ 

2009 Priority Bills
The text of each bills is available at http://leginfo.ca.gov/bilinfo.html, or by clicking the number.

AB 2(De La Torre) Individual health care coverage.
Summary:  This bill would require the DMHC director and DOI commissioner to establish standard information and health history questions to be used by health care service plans and health insurers for their individual health care coverage application forms and would require all health care service plan and health insurance applications to be reviewed and approved by the director or the commissioner before use by a health care service plan or health insurer. This bill would also require all plans and insurers to complete medical underwriting prior to issuing a health care service plan contract or health insurance policy. It would prohibit a plan or insurer from canceling or rescinding an individual health care service plan contract or individual health insurance policy unless specified conditions are met. The bill would also require a plan or insurer to annually report to the department the total number of individual health care service plan contracts or individual health insurance policies issued, canceled, or rescinded pursuant to these provisions during the preceding calendar year.
Position: Support

AB 98(De La Torre) Maternity services.
Summary:  This bill would require health insurance policies to provide coverage for maternity services
Position: Support

AB 108(Hayashi) Individual health care coverage.
Summary:  This bill would prohibit a health care service plan or health insurer from rescinding an individual health care service plan contract or individual health insurance policy for any reason, or from canceling, limiting, or raising the premiums of the plan contract or policy due to any omission, misrepresentation, or inaccuracy in the application form, after 18 months following the issuance of the plan contract or policy.
Position: Support

AB 119(Jones) Health care coverage: pricing.
Summary:  This bill prohibits health insurers from charging a different amount for different genders, even if the charge is based on statistical and actuarial data or underwriting principles.
Position: Support

AB 244(Beall) Health care coverage: mental health services.
Summary:  Under existing law, a health care service plan contract and a health insurance policy are required to provide coverage for the diagnosis and treatment of severe mental illnesses of a person of any age. Existing law does not define "severe mental illnesses" for this purpose but describes it as including several conditions. This bill would expand this coverage requirement for a health care service plan contract and a health insurance policy to include the diagnosis and treatment of a mental illness of a person of any age and would define mental illness for this purpose as a mental disorder defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV.
Position: Support

AB 354(Arambula) 
Summary:  This bill will make statutory vaccination requirements more consistent with current federal and AAFP recommendations for childhood immunizations. This bill updates the mandatory immunizations to remove certain age and date restrictions that cause confusion and have been barriers to maximizing immunization rates, particularly for haemophilus influenzae type b, mumps, and pertussis vaccines.
Position: Support

AB 611(Fong) Emergency services: populations with limited English proficiency.
Summary:  This bill would require the Secretary of California Emergency Management to consider the multiple languages and needs of populations who have limited proficiency in the English language and to incorporate their needs in the curricula and scenarios related to critical emergency preparedness planning, response, and recovery training. The bill would also require the secretary to incorporate ethnic media and local ethnic community-based organizations and ethnic media outlets in communication plans to alert them about emergency information strategies and to use a registry of qualified bilingual persons in public contact positions, as defined, to assist in emergencies.
Position: Support

AB 613(Beall) Medi-Cal: treatment authorization requests.
Summary:  This bill would require Medi-Cal, in pursuing means to improve and streamline the treatment authorization request (TAR) process, to perform a cost-benefit analysis for every procedure for which a TAR is required. It also seeks to reduce the number of procedures that need a TAR.
Position: Support

SB 383(Liu) Autism: screening.
Summary: This bill would require the State Department of Development Services to establish a 2-year pilot project to identify best practices in integrating the services and supports provided to children with ASD through the regional centers and school districts.
Position: Support

ACR 29(Jones) Health disparities: racial and ethnic populations.
Summary:  This measure would request that the California Health and Human Services Agency provide leadership to ensure that, within existing resources and programs, departments within the agency implement programs, activities, and strategies that place a priority focus on preventing, reducing, and eliminating health disparities among racial and ethnic population subgroups.
Position: Support

AB 259(Skinner) Health care coverage: certified nurse-midwives: direct access.
Summary:  This bill would require a health care service plan contract or health insurance policy to allow an enrollee or policyholder the option to seek obstetrical and gynecological services directly from a certified nurse-midwife instead of an obstetrician, gynecologist, or family physician.
Position: Oppose

AB 1430(Swanson) Pupil health: licensed nurses.
Summary:  This bill stipulates that any medication that is administered to a pupil who is required to take medication prescribed for him or her by a physician or surgeon shall be administered by a licensed nurse. The language in the bill excludes physicians and parents, and limits the ways by which children can access their medications.
 Position: Oppose

SB 600(Padilla) Cigarette and tobacco products taxes: Tobacco Tax and Health Protection Fund.
Summary:  This bill would create a 7.5 cent per cigarette tax increase on the purchase of cigarettes. 85 percent of the proceeds would go to the General Fund, and 15 would go to tobacco prevention/control and lung cancer research.
Position: Approve